How to use iTunes 11's new features (with the old look)

20 hrs.

Thorin Klosowski , Lifehacker

Apple released its newest version of iTunes, and it's a complete overhaul to the entire program. As you'd?expect, that means there are a few cool (somewhat) hidden features. Here are some we've found especially helpful.

With any new iteration of software you're bound to have a bit of a learning curve as you get used to it.?iTunes? 11?is no different, and the first thing you're greeted to when you launch it is a completely different main screen. The big news with iTunes 11 is the new interface, but hidden beneath that is some pretty cool functionality you might not notice at first glance.

Yes, you can get the old iTunes look back (sidebar and all)
Let's start with what we're guessing is most people's main gripe: it looks different. It's true, it does, and if you're not a fan of browsing your music library with giant covers, and navigating drop-down menus, iTunes 11 is a bit annoying. The good news? You can get the old look back:

• Get the sidebar back by clicking View > Show Sidebar (or hitting Alt+Cmd+S).
• Get the status bar back by clicking View > Show Status Bar (or hit Command+/).
• Click Songs in the top bar, and sort by Artist for the traditional list view.

Now, iTunes 11 should look about the same as iTunes 10.

Scan iTunes gift cards with your camera
Entering?in the code from a gift?certificate is always a bit annoying. With iTunes 11, all you need is a camera:

• Head into the iTunes Store, and Click "Redeem" at the bottom of the screen under the "Manage" list (or?click this link)
• Click "Use Camera"
• Hold your gift card up to the camera and wait for it to register.

That's it! No more fumbling around typing a random string of letters and numbers together.

Expanded view replaces cover flow
Cover Flow is gone in iTunes 11 and it's replaced with the new "Expanded View." When you're viewing your library by Albums, simply select an album, and you get an expanded view right there with all the album info. It works a lot better than Cover Flow and makes it so you can quickly view album info without leaving the place you're at. You can either click the album art again, or the "X" in the right corner to make it go away.

Also, a fun fact: Expanded View uses the album artwork as a background for the view (see image at right), so it creates a different background for each album. You can disable this if you want under iTunes > Preferences > General Preferences. Just uncheck the "Use custom colors for open albums, movies, etc" box.

The 'up next' feature is actually awesome?
Ever have those moments where you're listening to a song and it reminds you of another song? You don't want to stop the song playing, but you do want to cue up the song you're thinking of. That's what "Up Next" lets you do. Instead of creating playlists for everything, you can create on-the-fly playlists of songs or albums.

You can do this from anywhere. Just right-click an album, artist, or song, click "Add to Up Next" and it's added to the queue. You can also click "Play Next" instead to add it to the top of the queue. To see what's in your queue, click the list button in the middle of iTunes, and to view the previously played tracks, click the little clock icon. "Up Next" replaces iTunes DJ/Party Shuffle, so if you're looking for those, you won't find them.

Your place is now saved across devices?
If you use a bunch of Apple products, say, an iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, one of the best new features in iTunes 11 is that it saves your progress in your media across all devices through iCloud. So, if you pause a movie, TV show, podcast, audiobook, or iTunes U file on your desktop, you can pick up right where you left off on another device.?

MiniPlayer is more functional
In older versions of iTunes, the MiniPlayer didn't do much except allow you to pause or skip tracks. Now, MiniPlayer allows you to search for new tracks, add new songs to the "Up Next" queue, and even control AirPlay volume.

To enable MiniPlayer, just click the window icon in the top right corner and iTunes will shrink down. When you mouse over the window, you can control playback or search for new tracks. Otherwise, it displays the currently playing track.

Preview history tracks what you listen to in the store?
The iTunes Store now tracks everything you listen to in its preview history panel. When you're in the store, click the list icon in the top right corner, and you're shown all the stuff you listened to recently. You can hit "Clear" to get rid of everything in the list Also worth noting is that provided you're signed in with iCloud, your previewed tracks on all your devices will sync here. So, if you preview a song on your iPhone, it will show in your preview history in iTunes.?

Search is now universal?
This isn't the most earth-shattering of news, but in iTunes 11 you have two main search areas: the store and your library. That's it. In previous versions you had to search separately for video, music, or podcasts. Now, it searches your entire local library, or the iTunes store for everything.

Also nice is the instant search results you get. Start typing a search, and iTunes starts delivering you results. Select what you want, and you're taken there directly. It's simple, but it works really well.

Apps get a list view for easy trimming
One of the most annoying things to do in older versions of iTunes was trimming down the apps downloaded on your computer. You had to do it in the Apps panel with large icons that seemed to take forever to load. Now you can do it with in a List View, and it supports the same basic sort options you get with music (Date Added, Purchase Date, Size, etc).

All you need to do is select the Apps tab, then click "List." This should come in really handy when you're cleaning out old apps you don't use anymore. Reader?shafnitz points out?this view has been around a little while, but if nothing else it's more prevalent now.

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Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/gadgetbox/how-use-itunes-11s-new-features-bring-back-old-itunes-1C7361026

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Researchers find evidence for water ice deposits and organic material on Mercury

Friday, November 30, 2012

Planetary scientists have identified water ice and unusually dark deposits within permanently shadowed areas at Mercury's north pole.

Using data collected by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, a team from UCLA crafted the first accurate thermal model of the solar system's innermost planet, successfully pinpointing the extremely cold regions where ice has been found on or below the surface.

The researchers say the newly discovered black deposits are a thin crust of residual organic material brought to the planet over the past several million years through impacts by water-rich asteroids and comets.

Understanding how water ice has been preserved on Mercury and where it came from may help scientists determine the conditions necessary for sustaining life on other planets.

This research, one of three MESSENGER papers published online today in the journal Science (and scheduled for upcoming print publication), sheds light on the long-standing issue of ice on Mercury. Several independent lines of evidence now reveal that the sun-scorched planet has extensive water ice deposits at its poles.

In the early 1990s, scientists were surprised to find that areas near Mercury's poles were unusually bright when observed with radar from Earth, a potential indication that ice might be present.

UCLA's David Paige, the lead author of one of the new Science papers and a self-described "professional ice finder," has studied the poles of planetary bodies in the solar system, from Mercury to Pluto.

"Mercury is the innermost planet in the solar system, and, arguably, it's among the least explored," said Paige, a professor of Earth and space sciences. "The surface of Mercury exhibits the most extreme range of temperatures of any body we know of in the solar system."

Within a single polar crater on Mercury, there are spots that reach the oven-like temperature of 500 degrees Fahrenheit within sight of areas cold enough to freeze and preserve water ice for billions of years. These "natural freezers" exist within the shadowed areas of polar-crater rims, which never experience direct sunlight due to the low angle of the sun at such high latitudes, Paige said.

Paige's team was able to use the first detailed topographic map of Mercury's north polar region produced by MESSENGER to generate an accurate thermal model of the pole. Their calculations of the planet's sub-surface temperatures are a near-perfect match to Earth-based radar observations and surface-brightness measurements made by the Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) instrument onboard the orbiting spacecraft.

Where their temperature model predicts water ice should be stable on the surface, the MLA nearly always measures unusually bright patches, indicative of surface ice deposits. In places where it is too warm for surface ice but cold enough for ice to exist beneath the surface, the MLA sees unusually dark material.

"This stuff we find covering the ice is darker than the rest of Mercury, which is already a really dark planet. That's amazing," Paige said. "At the very least, it means there is something out of the ordinary going on inside these permanently shadowed areas where the ice has accumulated."

The mysterious dark substance likely arrived on Mercury as part of the comets and asteroids that periodically crash into the planet, bringing water ice and a diverse cocktail of organic material, Paige said. In the searing daytime heat of Mercury, the only place water and organics can survive is within permanently shadowed craters.

But only in the very coldest areas of the permanently shadowed regions can water ice exist on the surface. In the warmer shadowed areas, the top layers of ice begin to evaporate away into space, leaving behind a layer of hardy organic molecules that are stable at higher temperatures and which turn black over time when exposed at the surface. Once the dark layer is thick enough, it protects the ice underneath, allowing a sub-surface ice deposit to survive.

"There are areas on the surface where it is too hot for ice to exist, but radar data from Earth show something bright reflecting from these areas, so we're pretty sure that there's water ice buried underneath," said co-author Matthew Siegler, a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a UCLA alumnus. "You need some kind of insulating layer to keep that heat from getting down to the ice."

The presence of bright ice and dark organics on Mercury's surface presents a mystery for MESSENGER researchers. Large comets and asteroids periodically impact Mercury, covering a huge swath of the planet in a layer of dirt and dust and adding further craters to the airless planet's already scarred landscape. For the water ice and black organic layers to remain exposed on Mercury's ancient surface, the deposits must have formed recently in the planet's geological history, or they must be maintained by new water brought to Mercury by smaller, more frequent impacts.

"Billions of years ago, the Earth acquired a layer of water and other volatile material that formed atmospheres, oceans and even the first organic molecules that started life," Paige said. "Understanding the origin of that material is a very important problem and is essential to finding out about the potential habitability of planetary systems around other stars."

Ellen Harju, a graduate student in the UCLA Department of Earth and Space Sciences, is a co-author of the paper.

Paige's study was published alongside two other MESSENGER papers, with colleagues David Lawrence and Greg Neumann as the lead authors. All three research discoveries were showcased today in a press conference on NASA TV.

Launched in 2004, MESSENGER became the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury in March of 2011. Previously, the closest glimpse of the planet was provided by three fly-bys by the Mariner 10 spacecraft in 1974-75. The name MESSENGER, short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging, was chosen to evoke the Greco-Roman messenger deity Mercury, a god of trade, merchants and travel.

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University of California - Los Angeles: http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu

Thanks to University of California - Los Angeles for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125617/Researchers_find_evidence_for_water_ice_deposits_and_organic_material_on_Mercury

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Gabby Douglas Nearly Quit Gymnastics to Work Fast Food!

Gabby Douglas is an Olympic champion, but just one year ago, she almost got out of gymnastics altogether... to work at a fast-food joint!

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Saints' Vilma, Smith attend Williams hearing

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Saints defensive end Will Smith says he's glad he got a chance to hear former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams testify at an appeals hearing in the bounties case.

Smith and New Orleans linebacker Jonathan Vilma attended Friday's session, where Williams was cross-examined by the players' lawyers for about four hours.

Smith described the hearing as "peaceful" and "not awkward."

Smith and Vilma ? along with two former Saints, free-agent defensive lineman Anthony Hargrove and Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita ? were suspended by the NFL for the Saints' cash-for-hits program that the league says Williams ran from 2009 to 2011.

Smith, suspended four games, and Vilma, suspended for the entire current season, have been playing while their appeals are pending.

Smith declined to discuss any details of Friday's hearing.

"We got to hear what Gregg had to say," Smith said. "We wanted to make sure we were there just to hear him out.".

Right from the start, the NFL said Williams was in charge of a pay-for-pain bounty system with the New Orleans Saints.

The former defensive coordinator ? who told the league about others' involvement ? was being cross-examined Friday by lawyers for players appealing their suspensions in the case.

"We know what we did and know what we didn't do," Smith said.

The hearing is part of the latest round of player appeals overseen by former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. Former Saints assistant coach Mike Cerullo faced questions Thursday, when lawyers for the league and for players spent more than nine hours in a Washington office building.

Tagliabue and various lawyers declined to comment Thursday or Friday.

Vilma and Smith traveled to Washington after playing in New Orleans' 23-13 loss at Atlanta on Thursday night.

Neither player was required to attend Friday, but Smith said this week that "part of the things that we wanted all along was to face our accusers."

The NFL has described Vilma and Smith as ringleaders of a performance pool designed to knock targeted opponents out of games. The league has sworn statements from Williams and Cerullo saying Vilma offered $10,000 to anyone who knocked quarterback Brett Favre out of the NFC championship game at the end of the 2009 season.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell issued the initial suspensions, which also included a full-season ban for Saints head coach Sean Payton.

Lawsuits brought by Vilma and the NFL Players Association to challenge Goodell's handling of the case, including his decision in October to appoint Tagliabue as the arbitrator for the appeals, are pending in federal court in New Orleans.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan gave the parties until Monday to answer questions about whether the NFL's collective bargaining agreement prevents a commissioner from handing out discipline for legal contact, and whether the CBA's passages about detrimental conduct are "ambiguous, hence unenforceable."

In March, the NFL announced that its investigation showed the Saints put together a bounty pool of up to $50,000 to reward game-ending injuries inflicted on opponents. "Knockouts" were worth $1,500 and "cart-offs" $1,000 ? with payments doubled or tripled for the playoffs, the league said.

According to the league, the pay-for-pain program was administered by Williams, with Payton's knowledge. At the time, Williams apologized for his role, saying: "It was a terrible mistake, and we knew it was wrong while we were doing it."

Later that month, Payton became the first head coach suspended by the league for any reason ? banned for all of this season without pay ? and Williams was suspended indefinitely.

Williams was known for his aggressive, physical defenses as a coordinator for Tennessee, Washington, Jacksonville and New Orleans, and during his time as head coach of Buffalo. In January, he was hired by St. Louis to lead their defense.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/saints-vilma-smith-attend-williams-hearing-151536956--nfl.html

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Egyptians protest after draft constitution raced through

CAIRO (Reuters) - An Islamist-led assembly raced through approval of a new constitution for Egypt on Friday to end a crisis over President Mohamed Mursi's newly expanded powers, but opponents responded with another rally in Cairo against the Islamist leader.

"The people want to bring down the regime," they chanted in Tahrir Square, where hundreds had gathered, echoing the chants that rang out in the same place less than two years ago and brought down Hosni Mubarak.

Mursi said the decree halting court challenges to his decisions, which sparked eight days of protests and violence by Egyptians calling him a new dictator, was "for an exceptional stage", aimed at speeding up the democratic transition.

"It will end as soon as the people vote on a constitution," he told state television while the constituent assembly was still voting on the draft, which the Islamists say reflects Egypt's new freedoms. "There is no place for dictatorship."

The opposition cried foul. Liberals, leftists, Christians, more moderate Muslims and others had withdrawn from the assembly, saying their voices were not being heard.

They have called for a big rallies across the country on Friday after tens of thousands protested against Mursi's decree on Tuesday. Demonstrations tend to gather pace later in the day.

Protesters said they would push for a 'no' vote in a referendum, which could happen as early as mid-December. If approved, it would immediately cancel the president's decree.

"We fundamentally reject the referendum and constituent assembly because the assembly does not represent all sections of society," said Sayed el-Erian, 43, a protester in Cairo's Tahrir Square. He is a member of the liberal Dostour (Constitution) Party, set up by prominent opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei.

"Leave, leave," some chanted, another anti-Mubarak slogan.

The plebiscite on the constitution is a gamble based on the Islamists' belief they can mobilize voters again after winning all the elections since Mubarak was overthrown in February 2011.

But it will need the cooperation of judges to oversee the vote, though many were angered by Mursi's decree that they said undermined the judiciary. Some judges have gone on strike.

The assembly concluded the vote after a 19-hour session, approving all 234 articles including presidential powers, the status of Islam, the military's role and the extent to which human rights will be respected in the post-Hosni Mubarak era.

HISTORIC CHANGES

The final draft contains historic changes to Egypt's system of government. It limits to eight years the amount of time a president can serve, for example. Mubarak was in power for three decades. It also introduces a degree of oversight over the military establishment - though not enough for critics.

Mursi is expected to ratify the document by Saturday, allowing a referendum to be held as soon as mid-December.

"We have finished working on Egypt's constitution," said Hossam el-Gheriyani, head of the assembly in a live broadcast of the session. "We will call the president today (Friday) at a reasonable hour to inform him that the assembly has finished its task and the project of the constitution is completed."

The vote was often interrupted by bickering between the mostly Islamist members and Gheriyani over the articles. Several articles were amended on the spot before they were voted on.

"This is a revolutionary constitution," Gheriyani said, asking members of the assembly to launch a cross-country campaign to "explain to our nation its constitution".

Critics argue it is an attempt to rush through a draft they say has been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood, which backed Mursi for president in a June election, and its allies.

Two people have been killed and hundreds injured in protests since the decree on Thursday last week, which deepened the divide between the newly empowered Islamists and their critics.

Setting the stage for more tension, the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies have called for pro-Mursi rallies on Saturday. But officials from the Brotherhood's party changed the venue and said they would avoid Tahrir Square.

Seeking to calm protesters, Mursi said he welcomed opposition but there was no place for violence. "I am very happy that Egypt has real political opposition," he said.

He said Egypt needed to attract investors and tourists. The crisis threatens to derail early signs of an economic recovery after two years of turmoil. Egypt's benchmark stock index fell on Thursday to a four-month low.

An alliance of opposition groups pledged to keep up protests and said broader civil disobedience was possible to fight what it described as an attempt to "kidnap Egypt from its people."

ISLAMIC REFERENCES

Eleven newspapers plan not to publish on Tuesday to protest Mursi's decree, one reported. Al-Masry Al-Youm, one of Egypt's most widely read dailies, also said three privately owned satellite channels would not broadcast on Wednesday in protest.

The draft injects new Islamic references into Egypt's system of government but keeps in place an article defining "the principles of sharia" as the main source of legislation - the same phrase found in the previous constitution.

The president can declare war with parliament's approval, but only after consulting a national defense council with a heavy military and security membership. That was not in the old constitution, used when Egypt was ruled by ex-military men.

Activists highlighted other flaws such as worrying articles pertaining to the rights of women and freedom of speech.

A new parliamentary election cannot happen until the constitution is passed. Egypt has been without an elected legislature since the Islamist-dominated lower house was dissolved in June, based on a court order.

"The secular forces and the church and the judges are not happy with the constitution; the journalists are not happy, so I think this will increase tensions in the country," said Mustapha Kamal Al-Sayyid, a Cairo University political science professor.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Yasmine Saleh and Tamim Elyan; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/opposition-cries-foul-egypt-constitution-finalized-002340246.html

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